


Misper

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan pre-series [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 03:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17634899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: A woman has disappeared. Her husband wants to find her.





	1. Chapter 1

EIGHT YEARS AGO, IN THE FOREST OF DEAN

Sergeant Sam Lewis gave in and ripped the packet, finally fighting her way her way into the prawn mayo sandwich Pete White had just dropped onto her desk. “Jesus, don’t they want you to eat the sodding things? Did you get the crisps?”

He tossed a bag over to her. “Prawn cocktail, as ordered. Prawn ice cream for afters, sarge?”

“Fuck off. I like prawns.” She started to bite chunks out of the sandwich, expecting the phone to start ringing any minute. It always did when you’d just started to eat. Alternating a mouthful of crisps with a mouthful of sandwich, she demolished her lunch in the time it took Pete to rustle up a couple of mugs of engine oil masquerading as coffee. “How did you get on with the cleaner?”

“Jerome? Nice lad. Not the brightest lightbulb in the box, but seems OK.”

Sam suppressed a grin. One day she’d introduce Whitey to the concept of irony. “What about his mystery woman? Any sign of her?”

“Nope. We’ve put an appeal out for witnesses, but apart from Widow Twanky in the Twatmobile, the whole fucking area has gone down with a bad case of the Three Wise Monkeys.”

“So what did Mrs Taylor actually see?” The woman was the wife of the local Lord High Executer in the Masons, not that Pete White would give a toss about that, but it meant that unless Sam wanted a bollocking from On High, she at least had to pay lip service to the old battleaxe.

“Shopping trolley flying across the road towards her bellowed Twatmobile.”

“Flying or rolling?”

“Flying. She said it bounced across the road in two bloody great big hops. Didn’t touch her car, but the owner of the Astra it ended up on top of wasn’t best pleased.”

“So how come someone managed to chuck it that far without her seeing them?”

He shrugged. “Same with the cars, sarge. There are dents everywhere on them, but no one was seen kicking shit out of anything and the CSIs couldn’t work out what had done it. They’ve not lifted a single print – finger or boot,” he added.

The CCTV had been fucked, as well. The manager, who hadn’t been best pleased to be rousted out of bed at gone midnight, said it had stopped working three days ago, but maintenance hadn’t got around to fixing it. The supermarket hadn’t had much trouble recently, so it hadn’t been much of a priority. Funny how priorities changed when some little toe-rags had just trashed a bunch of cars and the front of your shop.

“So suspect number one is Dev from the 12 o’clock shop…”

“Eh?” To emphasise his confusion, Pete scratched his bollocks.

“Well, he’s the one who’s benefitted most from Asda being out of action.” Sam rolled her eyes. “Joke, Whitey, and for fuck’s sake stop scratching your nuts.”

Pete grimaced. “It’s Pauline’s new washing up tabs, sarge. I think I’m allergic.”

Sam waved her hand in the air. “So, we’re precisely bloody nowhere. That’s not exactly going to get the DI off our backs, is it?”

Peter’s mournful expression wouldn’t have been out of place on a basset hound.

“Check the rest of the CCTV in the area. Let’s see who was out and about.” She stood up. “I’m going to see if the CSIs have got anything more for us.”

They hadn’t, although one of them unhelpfully remarked that the cars looked like they’d been head-butted by a de-horned rhino.

The total lack of suspects was starting to piss Sam off. It was as if the whole area had just decided to close ranks – apart from Widow Twanky, and she’d seen bugger all.

****

A week later, they were still no further forward, and even the manager had stopped phoning daily. The loss adjusters for Asda’s insurers had been as baffled as the CSIs and were probably still poring over the small print in the contract in an attempt to avoid a big payout. They’d had plenty of calls from pissed off car owners as well. All Asda had done with them was point out the sentence on their own signs that referred to cars being parked at their owners’ rick. That had gone down like a turd in a swimming pool, but that wasn’t Sam’s problem.

After ten days, the file had been stuffed into a cabinet and Sam was tearing her hair out over another spate of thefts from isolated farms. Situation normal for the Forest of Fucking Dean. Oh, and Widow Twanky’s Twatmobile had been written off after a collision with a wild boar. Naturally, she’d claimed it had been twice the usual size and twice as ugly and she wanted to know when Sam was going to organise a cull. Sam had smiled, nodded, and passed the report to her boss. He’d promptly filed it in the bin. She’d had to fish it out when he’d gone home and log it on the system, just in case the old bat complained.

****

“Sam, there’s a bloke in reception, says he wants to file a misper.”

“Can’t Pete deal with it?”

“Nah, he’s interviewing Gavin Dacre about a nicked car. Silly sod left his prints all over it.”

“OK, Sally, stick him in Interview Two.”

“Coffee?”

“Why not? Let’s push the boat out and offer him a biccie, too. I can do empathy. Went on a course on it last year.”

Interview Two was a small, dismal room smelling of BO and bleach. The only natural light came in through a thin window caked with pigeon shit. By the time Sam got there, Sally had left two mugs of coffee and a plate of chocolate biccies on the table. The plate wasn’t even cracked. Hospitality, Coleford style.

The bloke was pacing up and down as Sam walked in. He was mid-thirties, wearing some sort of green army jacket, a pale green shirt and shabby jeans. His blond hair looked like it could do with a good wash and his face hadn’t seen a razor for at least a week.

Sam plastered on her best professional smile and held out her hand. “Dr Cutter? I’m Sergeant Sam Lewis. I understand you want to report your wife missing?”

“Aye.” He stopped pacing long enough to shake her hand. His grip was firm but not too macho. “My wife, Helen, she’s not been home for nearly two weeks.” The accent was Scottish and his blue eyes were worried.

Sam waved her hand at the chair. “Sit down, Dr Cutter. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”

Half an hour later, she knew more about the state of the man’s marriage than she wanted to know and she’d eaten all the biscuits. He’d drunk half the coffee, but only when she’d reminded him of its presence on the table.

The Cutters had argued. So what, big deal. But she gave him points for honesty. Most husbands pretended that everything had been sweetness and light, with a side order of tea and kittens. At least this guy told it how it was, and she was inclined to believe him, even though she was having a problem getting her head around what the hell they’d been arguing about.

“Anomalies in the fossil record,” Cutter repeated, running his hands through his hair and making it stand up in startled-looking clumps. “And strange animal sightings.”

Sam tried not to roll her eyes. The wild boar periodically made it into the papers, and a few weeks ago, they’d had a couple of birdwatchers reporting something large crashing around in the bushes. It had been a slow news day and the local rag had picked it up. That had led to a spate of sightings of something that, conveniently, no one could give a coherent description of, but the whole thing had quickly died down, apart from one of the local farmers trying to cash in by saying two of his sheep had gone missing. They’d given him a crime number and his insurers had no doubt grumbled but coughed up and, to be fair, they did periodically get reports of stock being stolen.

“She said I wasn’t taking her seriously enough.”

“Were you?”

He sighed. “Aye, well, maybe not.”

“Why have you come to see us now, Dr Cutter?” Sam asked. “You’ve not seen your wife for nearly two weeks. But you’ve been away in the States for most of that time, so you don’t really know whether she’s been back home or not.”

“She’s not been home. The milk in the fridge was all off. There’s no way Helen would go without milk in her coffee. The house was exactly as I’d left it. There was post all over the mat.”

“So why suddenly pole up here and report her missing? You live near London. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to go to a station nearer your home?”

“I…” He looked acutely uncomfortable.

Sam made no move to help him out.

“I looked at the search history on her laptop. She’d been looking at maps of the Forest of Dean, and newspaper reports about animal sightings.”

“What about her car?” Sam threw the question at him casually. “You said she drove off.”

“Aye, she did.”

“Make and registration?” The image of the wrecked cars in the ADA carpark came strongly back to mind, but they had all been spoken for.

Cutter reeled off the details and Sam scribbled them down in her notebook.

“I’ll put the word around.” She stood up. “More coffee?” He hadn’t finished the first mug but Sam needed a refill.

“Thanks.” He was distracted and it showed.

Pete White was still at his desk, doing nothing useful.

“Whitey, run me a PNC check on this one.” She waved her notebook under his nose. “See if anyone has seen it parked anywhere on our patch.”

He grabbed a pen and wrote the make and reg down. “On it, sarge.”

Sam saddled a passing PCSO with the drinks order and wandered back into the interview room.

She smiled. The reassuring one she practised in the mirror every morning, just after she spat a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink. It needed more work, but he wasn’t in any state to give her marks out of ten for empathy.

“We’ve passed the details of your wife’s car to all units in the area, Dr Cutter.” She sat down, leaning slightly back in her chair, doing her best to look relaxed. “Why did you leave it nearly two weeks to come to see us? Weren’t you worried about not having had any contact with her while you were away.”

He looked uncomfortable. “This isn’t the first time…” He trailed off, looking even more uncomfortable.

“Mrs Cutter is volatile?”

“Dr Cutter,” he said automatically.

“Is Dr Cutter volatile?”

“She can flare up at times.” The words came out hesitantly, but he met her eyes and Sam saw nothing there to make him doubt what he said.

“What about your relationship. Would you describe that as volatile as well?”

He squirmed in the chair and hesitated, seemingly unwilling to confront the reality of their marriage, even though he’d already given her a pretty unvarnished picture of how things were between them. Sam let the silence draw out to breaking point, waiting to see how long it took for the man to finally fill the void between them.

“Yes.” He spoke softly, then cleared his throat and looked directly at her. “Yes, we had our rows. Helen is good at picking fights. I knew that when I married her, but…”

But from the slightly wistful look on his face, they probably had spectacular make-up sex. She needed time to dig some background on this guy.

Sam smiled. “Have you got a photo of Helen, Dr Cutter?”

Without hesitation, he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open, holding it out so she could see the photo in the inside pocket. A woman wearing a white top looked challengingly at the camera, one elbow resting on her bare knees, a hand held up to her dark hair. She was wearing sunglasses, so it was hard to gauge her expression, but to Sam, the picture spoke of easy confidence. The woman’s mouth was open in a slight smile. She was striking rather than pretty, but this was someone who would draw admiring looks.

“May I take a copy of this?” Sam asked. “I’ll make sure you get it back.”

Cutter slid the photo out of his wallet and handed it to her. His clear blue eyes were worried. “What will happen next?” he asked.

“We’ll see if her car turns up anywhere, and I’ll circulate her photo.” Sam stood up and offered him her hand. You could tell a lot from someone’s handshake at the end of an interview, on the rare occasions she offered one. Cutter’s was still firm, betraying no tell-tale sweat. “Where can I reach you?”

“I’ve booked into the Eddington Hotel. I was going to start looking for her myself.”

Sam nodded. “Let me know before you leave the area and I’ll get the photo back to you as quickly as I can.”

She showed him out, watching him walk to a battered silver Hilux in the carpark.

When she got back up to the office Pete White was sitting with his feet up on the desk, munching a doughnut. He pointed at a paper bag. “Got one for you, too.”

“Let me scan this first.”

She put the photo face down on the scanner, hoping the bloody thing would work properly for once without having to be coaxed into life with a mix of threats and pleas. The only person who could get it to work reliably was Brian, one of the PCSOs, and he wasn’t on shift again until after the weekend. For a change, it chuntered into life without too much problem and she sent the scan to her computer. She slipped the photo into an envelope and marked as the property of Dr Nick Cutter, to be returned to him.

Sam sent the photo to the printer then opened it on the screen and beckoned Pete over. “Take a gander at this for me. Husband says she left after a row nearly two weeks ago, and hasn’t been seen since. Apparently, she’d been looking at maps of round here on her computer, as well as that daft story the Echo ran on the Beast of Coleford.”

Pete proceeded to drop jam and sugar all over her desk. “She’s a looker.” But his voice was more thoughtful than she’d come to expect when he was faced with an attractive woman.

“Whitey?”

He finished off the doughnut and licked his fingers. “The cleaner at Asda said he saw a dark-haired woman banging on the door when all the shit kicked off.” He pointed at the screen. “She’s dark-haired.”

Sam felt her pulse quicken. “Get this over to him asap.”

For once, Pete White didn’t hang around.


	2. Chapter 2

“Sarge, we know where that woman’s car is.” Sally Mitcham, their civilian front desk support, handed over a slip of paper.

“Good going.” Sam looked at the note. The car had been found in a small carpark on the edge of the Scowles. She could be there in a few minutes

“PC White just called, as well. The cleaner he went to see is on shift now.”

“Tell Whitey I’ll pick him up.”

****

Jerome Jude looked up nervously as Sam walked into the manager’s office.

She smiled, trying to put him at ease. Pete had brought her up to speed outside, but she just wanted to take a look at the lad for herself. “Are you sure that was the woman you saw the night of the trouble here, Jerome?”

He nodded earnestly.

“Why did you think she was knocking on the window?”

He shrugged. “Thought mebbe she wanted summat to drink, or some fags.”

“Did you see where she went when the trouble started?”

“Never saw nobody then. Honest!”

They’d never got a line on the vandals. It had crossed Sam’s mind that Jerome Jude might have been too nervous to grass some of the local yobs up, but from what Pete had turned up, the lad lived at home with his mum and thee younger brothers. His dad was in the merchant navy and none of the boys had ever been in trouble. It sounded like his mum was a holy terror. None of the boys even smoked, let alone hung around with the wrong crowd. The chances of him even knowing any of the local troublemakers wasn’t high, and he’d probably be more scared of his mum than them.

Sam looked at the copy of the original statement Pete had handed her. “Are you absolutely certain this was the same woman?” She gestured at the photo on the desk.

He nodded. “Had her hair tied back, though. And no sunglasses. But I think it was her.”

“What was she wearing?” Nick Cutter hadn’t been able to say with much certainty what clothes his wife had taken with her, but it was worth a try, even though most eye-witnesses were worse than fucking useless when it can to giving any sort of description.

Predictably, Jerome just shrugged.

“Is there anything at all you can remember about her?”

The lad’s face brightened as a thought struck him. “Had a rucksack on her back!”

Sam smiled. That was the most useful thing they’d got out of the lad. Now they just had to work out why Helen Cutter had left her car near the Scowles and had gone on foot to Asda. It was about 15 minutes’ walk between the two if she’d stuck to the road, probably slightly longer across the fields.

A woman who’d buggered off after a row with her husband wasn’t too much to get excited about, but it was a bit of a coincidence that she’d been seen just before a load of shit had kicked off in town. After six years in the job, Sam didn’t set too much store by coincidence.

“Good lad.” Pete looked across to Sam, letting her decide whether they’d got all they needed or not.

“Thanks, Jerome. You’ve been a big help.”

He smiled nervously, and Sam was willing to bet he was hoping for a note to take home to his mum.

It only took them five minutes to get down to the Scowles by car. The area was popular with walkers, particularly at weekends. There were six cars in the carpark. The silver Audi Cutter had described was parked tidily on one side. The doors were locked and the windows were up. There was nothing to suggest it had just been abandoned there, other than the fact that there was bird shit all over the windscreen, plus some blown leaves that had piled up over the air intakes at the base of the windscreen. The interior had a few sweet wrappers lying around but was generally pretty tidy, although the floor mats on the driver’s side showed signs of the red mud that came from walking around the area in wet weather.

The Scowles were said to be the remains of ancient iron workings, deep scars in the landscape, overgrown with tangled trees and their roots. It was popular with dog walkers. God knows how they ever got some of their animals clean again. Sam’s neighbour brought her fat Golden retriever here, and spent almost as long hosing the dog down in the garden as she did walking it.

“I want proof of where Nick Cutter was the night all the shit kicked off at Asda.” She’d slipped the envelope containing the photo of his wife into her pocket. That would give her an excuse to go over to the Eddington Hotel.

“You can ask him now,” Pete said, nodding at the entrance to the carpark where a silver Hilux had just pulled off the road.

The vehicle pulled up behind them and Cutter jumped out, his face animated. “That’s Helen’s car!”

Sam nodded. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“The owners of the hotel told me that one of the animal sightings had been around here. I was going to see if I could speak to the farmer.”

“Let us carry out the interviews, Dr Cutter.” The fact that Helen Cutter’s car was still here and looked like it hadn’t moved for quite a while worried Sam. She didn’t think it was likely that Nick Cutter was behind his wife’s disappearance, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but can you give me the details of the conference you were at, and who saw you over there?”

Cutter’s blue eyes widened in shock and she saw his jaw clench, then he ran a hand through his hair in a gesture she was starting to recognise and she watched the sudden tension ebb. “I flew from Heathrow to Rapid City, South Dakota via Denver. I gave a paper at a conference at the South Dakota School of Mines. About 150 people saw me.” He gave a rueful grin. “I can’t guarantee they all stayed awake during the paper, though. A phylogenetic analysis of a new early Permian reptile and its significance in early diapsid evolution.”

“Come again?” Pete commented.

Sam dug him in the ribs before he could start scratching his balls in puzzlement. She hadn’t understood a word of what Cutter had just said, either, but she’d bet the house that he was telling the truth. She scribbled what he’d said about the flights and the conference in her notebook.

“Can you give me the names of the students who went with you?”

“Aye. Annabel Robinson, Stephen Hart and Luke Akeman.”

“And did they all go with you on the dig?”

He nodded and his hand went automatically to his hair again. “Do you think I had something to do with Helen’s disappearance?”

“Hard to see how when you left the country the same day she left the house.” Sam smiled her reassuring smile. “Go back to the Eddington Hotel, Dr Cutter. I’ll come and see you later when I’ve asked around for anyone who might have seen Helen.”

Nick Cutter looked like he wanted to argue with her, so she shot him the look she normally reserved for Gav Dacre and the bunch of thieving scrotes he normally knocked about with. The only thing that surprised her was that Helen Cutter’s car wasn’t already up on bricks, stripped of its wheels and anything else the little sods could sell for a few quid.

She handed him the envelope containing the photograph of Helen and he clutched it like a lifeline before turning on his heel and walking back to the Hilux without a word. Before he swung himself up into the driver’s seat, he rummaged in a pocket and chucked something in Sam’s direction.

She caught whatever it was without thinking, and felt something metallic dig into her palm. She opened her hand and looked down at a car key on a worn leather hoop.

Cutter had just thrown her the spare keys to his wife’s car.

****

“Do you believe him, guv?” Pete stuck his feet up on the desk and took a bite out of an iced donut.

Sam slapped his feet off the desk. “Get some digging done.”

“What, like the doc does?”

“No, like a fucking copper does. Find out who apart from young Mr Jude saw Helen Cutter in the area and see if we can get any sightings of her after the night the car park got trashed. Talk to the farmers, see if anyone saw her wandering around their land. They’re more likely to talk to you than they are to me.”

“Look on the bright side, guv, you might lose the Brummie accent in about 40 years.”

“Will I end up with a slopey forehead and no chin as well?”

Whitey flipped her the bird and took a bit out of the last donut before she had chance to make a grab for it.

“And while you’re out there, you can combine it with some more enquiries about the farm thefts. And find out why, if tractors are so fucking easy to nick, the silly sods don’t take better precautions, or don’t they make crook locks big enough?” The same went for all the fucking quadbikes that were still going walkabout. Sam was fed up of getting it in the neck every time something when missing in the Forest. “I’ll be in my office. I’m going to make sure this lot checks out properly.” She waved her notebook under his nose. She’d taken down the travel details Cutter had given them in the car park. It was time to find out if what he’d said checked out.

Three hours later, she’d confirmed that Cutter and his three students had indeed flown from Heathrow to Denver, then caught an internal flight from there to Rapid City in South Dakota. They’d hired a car from Avis in Cutter’s name and he’d shown evidence of identity. The woman on the Avis desk remembered him and the students quite clearly. From the sound of it, Cutter could turn on the charm when he wanted, getting them an upgrade to a larger vehicle for the same price. The fact that one of the students had been – in the woman’s words – drop dead gorgeous, hadn’t gone amiss, either.

Their destination, as Cutter had said, had been the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. They’d spent the weekend at the conference, again exactly as Cutter had said, staying in university accommodation on campus. From there, the four of them had joined an American colleague on a long-running dig on a farmer’s land in the middle of what looked like the back of beyond. They’d spent a fortnight chipping things that Sam couldn’t begin to pronounce out of the rock, and had then reversed their route back to the UK.

In short, Dr Nick Cutter had been exactly where he said he’d been for the entire time. And Helen Cutter had last been seen alive the day after her husband had left for the States. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen her at some point in the last ten days.

She ended up making a few calls to the Central Metropolitan University, as well. A helpful administrator arranged for the Faculty Dean to ring her back. The man sounded rather cagey, but Sam put that down to a desire to avoid any bad publicity for the university. It wasn’t easy to look behind his replies, but it sounded like he had more time for Nick Cutter than he had for the absent Mrs – Dr – Cutter. The man hadn’t been keen to be drawn into speculation about the state of the Cutters’ marriage, especially on the phone, but Sam didn’t rule out paying the Dean a visit, although whether her inspector would sanction a trip that far out of town was by no means a certainty. He would probably be worried about her slipping her collar and romping around the fields if she went that far away from her own patch.

After three hours on the phone, Sam was sick of the sight of the glorified broom cupboard that passed for her office. Her back hurt when she finally stood up and she had the beginnings of a headache.

A glance out of the window told her it was lashing down with rain. Whitey wouldn’t be pleased having to tramp around the Forest in that weather.

On impulse, she rang the Eddington Hotel. The owner, a woman in her 60s who’d been desperate to sell the place for as long as Sam had known her, told her that Nick Cutter was propping up the bar, having spent the afternoon quizzing anybody who’d come in for a drink about his missing wife.

Sam rolled her eyes. He hadn’t taken much notice of her instruction to leave the interviews to them. On the off-chance that Whitey was somewhere with a mobile signal, she rang him, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left a message for him to call her.

After flipping quickly through the day’s reports, Sam decided to find out a bit more about Helen Cutter and why she’d stomped out in a huff. She got soaked on her way to the car, but her flat was en route to the hotel, so she grabbed a quick shower and an even quicker cheese sandwich, pulled on a sweater over a pair of jeans, put on a pair of ankle boots and a waterproof parka and then went in search of Nick Cutter.

The Eddington Hotel was an impressive pile just on the edge of the Forest, set in its own grounds, surrounded by an odd mix of regimented Forest Commission planting combined with some natural broadleaved woodland. Trees hadn’t figured much on Sam’s last patch, but since coming to Coleford, she’d made a conscious effort to become less of a townie and had even bought a tree identification guide. So far, she could just about tell an oak tree from a yew. Her only claim to erudition was knowing when to bandy around the word broadleaved. So far she’s only used it once in a conversation with a cute guy from the Forestry, but he’d turned out to be gay as a badger.

She pulled up as close to the main door as she could get and made a quick dash for shelter.

The receptionist looked up as Sam burst in and gave her a friendly smile. “Hello, Sergeant.”

Sam had never set eyes on the girl before, but the locals had information systems that would make GCHQ go green with envy. She smiled back. “Is Dr Cutter still in the bar, Chloe?” Sam was a copper, she could read a name badge at ten paces.

The girl smiled again and nodded.

Sam walked through to the bar. It was all soft lights and wood panelling and, on a wet Monday, it was clear that quite a lot of the guests had already decided that the sun was over the yardarm somewhere in the word.

Nick Cutter was perched on a bar stool, with his back to her. The fire blazing at one side of the room had clearly been enough for him to leave his old army jacket in his room and come downstairs in a pale blue and white striped shirt. His hair was sticking up in damp spikes, telling Sam that Cutter had either done what she’d done and grabbed a quick shower, or alternatively, he’d just come in from tramping the woods and fields. She’d put her money on the latter.

Sam slid onto the stool next to him. That finally attracted Cutter’s attention. He turned to face her, a sudden wild hope lighting up his vivid blue eyes.

“There’s no definite news as yet,” Sam said quickly, hating having to dampen the rush of hope she’d seen in his eyes. She wanted to hold onto Jerome Jude’s possible identification until after Whitey had done his trawl for information, but from the look in his eyes, if Nick Cutter was guilty of doing any harm to his wife, she’d eat her much-hated uniform hat. Without ketchup.

“Nice of you to tell me in person.”

Sam wasn’t sure whether he was being sarcastic or sincere, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “We’ve got people out talking to the local farmers.” Well, for people read PC Pete White, but there wasn’t much point in laying Gloucestershire Constabulary’s manpower woes at his door. “I’m hoping to hear back shortly.” Provided the idle bugger picked up his voicemail messages before clocking off and heading home for the shepherd’s pie his long-suffering mother had no doubt cooked for him. According to Peter, Monday was always shepherd’s pie day. There were times when Sam envied that degree of certainty in life. The only certainty in hers at the moment was that the pizza in her fridge was probably past its sell-by date. But as long as it hadn’t gone furry, she’d take a chance on it.

“Can I get you a drink?” Cutter offered. “You look like a hot toddy wouldn’t go amiss.”

“I’m driving, but a lemonade would be good.” She smiled at the lad behind the bar. “Lemon, no ice.”

Cutter pushed his empty glass across the bar. After pouring Sam’s lemonade, the barman held Cutter’s glass up to the optic for a double measure of Famous Grouse.

Sam gestured to a sofa in a quiet corner. “Shall we?”

Cutter looked a little surprised, but Sam was beginning to think that was his default setting. “Aye, why not?”

The sofa was comfortable, and from it Sam could see most of the bar and two different exits. You could take the girl out of Birmingham, but you couldn’t take Birmingham out of the girl.

“Tell me a bit more about the argument you had before Helen left,” Sam said, doing her best to keep her body language friendly. “You said it was something to do with anomalies in the fossil record. What sort of anomalies?”

This time, the silence really did stretch to breaking point.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam watched as Cutter swirled the whisky around in his glass, watching the way the pale amber liquid caught the light of the log fire in the hotel bar.

She didn’t rush to fill the silence.

Eventually, Cutter sighed. “The fossil record is full of anomalies. We only know about a tiny fraction of what’s inhabited our world in the past. But Helen had started to believe that there are more anomalies that we’ve suspected.” He took a mouthful of his whisky, obviously wondering how much detail he could go into before her eyes glazed over.

She sipped her lemonade. “My kid brother is a bit of a dinosaur freak. I can’t pronounce things properly, but I get the general idea.”

“Something from the Permian that ended up in the La Brea tar pits.”

Not wanting to show the depth of her ignorance quite so early in the conversation, Sam just nodded, inviting further explanation.

“They’re Pleistocene. The Permian was about 250 million years before that. There’s no way that a diictodon could have ended up in the same tar pit as a dire wolf.”

“So why haven’t I seen anything about this in the newspapers?”

A swift grin lit Cutter’s face. “Because no one in academia wants to end up looking like a complete dick.”

“I thought it happened all the time and the rest of you just pointed and laughed.”

“Good point, well made.” Cutter’s flash of good humour vanished as quickly as the sun on a wet Forest morning. “That’s one of the things we were arguing about. Helen didn’t give a toss about her career.”

“And you did?”

“Helen’s got a brilliant mind, sergeant. I didn’t like watching her throw her career away in pursuit of smoke and mirrors.”

“And you didn’t like the pointing and laughing.”

“No, I fucking didn’t.” He shot her an apologetic look but that was as far as it went, and Sam was pleased. It pissed her off when men apologised for swearing in front of her.

“So, there’s a dicky-don in the wrong place…”

Cutter’s eyeroll was expressive. “There was more to it than that. Helen had become…” he searched for the word, looked like he was busily rejected most of the candidates and finally settled for. “… obsessed.”

“I thought academics were meant to be obsessed.”

“Not when it doesn’t lead to publications. Look, Sergeant Lewis. Universities are tough places these days. You need to keep publishing, and not just anywhere. It has to be in decent publications, and then you need the citations as well. Helen’s work just wasn’t…” he hesitated again and looked almost pained, as if he’d been admitting to his wife’s infidelity or something, “… it just wasn’t getting past referees. She was getting more rejections that acceptances and it was starting to be noticed.”

“And that mattered?”

“Of course it bloody well mattered. Welcome to the world of universities, sergeant. You’re only as good as your last publication. Blot your copybook and the whole world knows about it. Academics are as bitchy as a classful of teenage girls…”

“Sexist…” Sam muttered.

“Have you ever taught a class of teenage girls?”

Sam had to admit she hadn’t. She gestured to Cutter’s now empty glass. “Refill?”

He glanced out of the window, as though weighing up whether he could continue his search.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sam said quickly. “You were over the limit before I even got here.”

She stood up and waked back to the bar. Another large whisky wouldn’t go amiss, not if she wanted him to open up to her.

“When did Helen’s obsession for anomalies in the fossil record begin?”

“Hard to say. She’s always been interested in the things that don’t fit, but then when the rejections started to come in, she became more stubborn. More determined to prove herself right. My wife…” There was no mistaking the almost wistful expression on the man’s face. “My wife is a very stubborn woman.”

Sam raised her eyebrows questioning.

Cutter gave a rueful laugh. “Aye, I’m stubborn too. But like I said, Helen has a brilliant mind. I didn’t want her turning into another Myra Shackley.” In response to Sam’s puzzled look, he said, “She ended up believing in the yeti and Bigfoot.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“As I said, welcome to the world of universities. Mud sticks. There’s always plenty of others willing to brown-nose, toe the party line and churn out enough papers a year to keep the bean-counters happy. Anyone who might attract the label maverick isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms.”

“Were you worried some of that mud might end up sticking to you?”

Cutter sighed. “There’s always that possibility, but that isn’t why it bothers me. Helen has a fine mind. She deserves recognition. Just not that way.”

The way he stuck to the present tense was a point in his favour, especially after her own tense shift. The last guy she’d dealt with who’d offed his wife hadn’t been quite so smooth.

“Did anything else bother you, Dr Cutter?” If she was on a fishing trip, Sam believed in casting widely. And she’d been certain that the Dean had been holding something back.

Cutter met her eyes. “We argued, Sergeant Lewis. I’ve already told you that. But Helen and I have a good marriage, even if it can be a tad… stormy at times.”

“Do you often go away for a few weeks at a time?”

“It’s summer, we always do a dig somewhere with students. Helen is due to supervise some fieldwork in three weeks’ time. We’ve got a bunch of students looking at fossil trackways.”

Sam kept her gaze strictly non-judgmental. “I hope you understand that I have to ask intrusive questions, Dr Cutter…”

“You want to know whether either of us has been having an affair.”

Sam smiled. “Go to the top of the class, Dr Cutter.”

“Call me Nick. No, neither of us is having an affair.” He held up a hand to forestall her next question. “And before you ask, no, neither of us has played away in the past, either. We’ve been married seven years. Yes, we argue, but it’s always a quick bust up, then things calm down. Neither of us is very good at apologies, but we don’t bear grudges, either.”

“That helps. Can you think of anyone your wife might have gone to stay with?”

He shook his head. “I’ve called everyone I can think of.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket with a short list of names addresses and phone numbers. “I thought you might want something like this. It’s always possible they might tell you something they wouldn’t tell me, but I don’t think it’s likely.”

Sam stood up and held out her hand. “Thanks for the chat, Nick. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I can, and you have my number in case you hear anything.” His handshake was firm and he looked genuinely grateful for the fact that she appeared to be taking the disappearance seriously.

She needed to talk to Whitey, and as the mobile reception at the hotel was shit, she’d need to get home or back to the station to have much of a chance of that.

The rain had eased slightly. She made a damp dash back to her car and, to her surprise, her phone beeped just as she jumped inside. A text from Whitey read: Meet me in the Black Bear. Drinks on U. Sam rolled her eyes, but wondered what he’d found out. She could dump the car at home and walk there.

Lemonade wasn’t exactly her preferred tipple.

*****

Pete White took a long pull of his pint of Doom Bar and sat back. “Dunno how you can drink that muck, sarge.” He gestured at her pint of Amstel.

“Likewise. Your mum’s shepherd’s pie up to scratch, was it?”

“Bloody lovely.” The usual pleasantries having been consigned to the dustbin, Whitey ripped open the packet of pork scratchings she’d bought and helped himself. “Wonder if they can make these out of the sodding boar? Saw half a dozen of the little buggers dashing across the road on my way to Valley Farm.”

“Ted Granger still sore about his tractor?”

“Damn right he is. His insurers are giving him stick. It’s the second he’s had nicked in three years. Reckons his premiums are going to go through the roof.”

“Stick a report on the system. What about our misper?”

Whitey took another drink and then helped himself to the largest of the scratchings. He had something to tell, and he was enjoying stringing her along. She crunched on one of the porkies and waited.

“He met her in the woods the morning the car park got done over. Said she was asking a load of questions.”

That wouldn’t have gone down well. Ted Granger was a curmudgeonly old sod who had no truck with anyone from ‘Off’. That was why she’d sent the Coleford born and bred Pete White over. He was probably related to Granger in at least three different ways, one of which probably wasn’t even legal.

“What sort of questions?” she said, playing the game and letting Whitey string out his story.

“Wanted to know if he’d had any trouble with animals. Said she was with DEFRA.”

That wouldn’t have gone down well. DEFRA was about as popular round there as a dose of foot and mouth. Maybe Helen Cutter wasn’t quite as bright as her husband thought.

Whitey grinned. “Ted said he knew she was talking bollocks. Reckoned she was a reporter. “Spent ten minutes telling her about what a pain the boar are, then another five giving her recipes for pork. But said he didn’t reckon that was what she was interested in. Thought she might have heard about other… things.” White’s normally open face took on a slightly more shuttered look.

“What sort of… things?” Sam had heard a few odd rumours since she’d moved to Coleford, but the locals were a cagey bunch and with her accent, they could peg her for an outsider a mile off.

Whitey shrugged. “Just daft stuff. Bit like the Beast o’ Bodmin. That kind of crap.”

“They reckon there’s a big cat living in the forest? Are they sure they don’t mean Garfield?” They got more complaints from the local postman about Mrs Morse’s ginger tom than they did about any of the dogs in the area.

“Little fucker had a go at me last week. Would have booted it if she wasn’t mam’s auntie.” He crunched up another porkie, clearly not caring that it bore a distinct resemblance to a pig’s nipple. “There were funny stories going the rounds when I was a kid. Funny peculiar, I mean. We used to dare each other to go into the Scowles at night. Nearly shat myself one night when that little sod Jimmy Mudway jumped out at me from behind a tree.”

The same Jimmy Mudway now did deliveries for Asda. And drank in the Cock Pheasant, the pub opposite the supermarket. Sam had half liked him for the damage in the car park, but him and his mates swore blind they’d been in the back bar playing darts and the landlord had backed them up. Mind you, Freddie Yearsley, would swear to anything if it involved a good customer.

“So what did Helen Cutter think of his stories?”

“Ted said she looked quite perky. Took down a load of details in a notebook and thanked him kindly for his time. He said she went off happy. She tried the same sketch on Ollie Page at Marchmount. He told her something had had a go at his chicken house the day before and she insisted on taking a look. He saw a lorry around there the night before, too, parked up in one of the laybys. Got a partial on the number plate. I’ll run it through the system tomorrow”

The abrupt change of subject made Sam blink, then she realised he was back onto the missing farm machinery. “Good work. So our Mrs Cutter has been sniffing around the area looking for big cats or whatever. Any sightings of her after the night Asda got their car park turned over?”

Whitey shook his head. “Not so far. I’ve asked Ted to ask around and get back to me if he hears anything. Folks’ll talk to him.”

They talked to Whitey, too. It was one of his main strengths. If Helen Cutter had been seen in the area after that night, he’d turn them up. But Sam was coming to the conclusion that they’d draw a blank.

Something had gone down that night and she still had no fucking idea what had happened, but whatever it was, Helen Cutter had been in the thick of it, that much was certain, and she was going to have to break that bit of news to Nick Cutter sooner rather than later.”

*****

“Someone saw my wife banging on a window and shouting for help and they just stood there and did nothing?” Nick Cutter’s voice had risen sharply, ricocheting off the stark walls of Interview Room Two with their peeling duck egg blue paint that Gloucestershire Constabulary had clearly bought in a job lot back in the 1990s and were still using up.

“He thought she just wanted to buy booze.” Sam didn’t think telling Cutter that Jerome had actually gone back to cleaning the floors rather than doing nothing wouldn’t go down too well.

“Happen a lot round here, does it?”

“It was Friday night, and the prices Dev charges in the 7 ‘till 7 are pretty outrageous.” Before Cutter could claim she was being flippant, Sam moved quickly on. “Constable White has talked to several of the local farmers. At least two of them saw your wife earlier that day, but none of them have seen her since. She was claiming to be from DEFRA and was asking about animal sightings, but they thought she was a journalist.”

Cutter put his head in his hands and closed his eyes for a moment. All Sam’s instincts told her the man wasn’t faking. When he looked up at her, the expression on his face was stark. “There was some sort of a riot in a car park and Helen hasn’t been seen since. What the hell went on that night?”

There was nothing for it but to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, something she’d sworn to do on numerous occasions in court. “I have absolutely no idea, but I’m going to do my best to find out.”

Nick Cutter met her eyes and gave a slight smile. “Thank you, Sergeant Sam Lewis.”

*****

Sam Lewis remained in Coleford for a further two years, until she passed her inspector’s exams and moved to Reading. During that time, along with Pete White, she spoke to three other farmers who remembered seeing Helen Cutter before the trouble at Asda, but never met anyone who had seen her after that night. They made no progress finding out who had decided to trash the car park, but they did catch the gang who were responsible for the thefts of farm machinery in the area. The partial number plate on the suspicious lorry proved crucial. Ted Granger even got his tractor back.

When the UK Missing Persons Bureau was set up, Sam entered Helen Cutter’s details on the database. She remained one of many unsolved mispers in Sam’s career.

A year later, she attended Professor Nick Cutter’s inaugural lecture at the Central Metropolitan University.

He didn’t notice her in the audience, and she had no intention of bringing back bad memories. The man looked like he’d achieved a measure of peace in his life, and she wished him well.

She even found herself strangely nostalgic for the Forest of Dean and Coleford nick.


End file.
